JWA has best year since 2007

John Wayne Airport began to reap the benefits of its terminal expansion and an improving economy, reporting its first annual increase in passengers for 2012 after four years of decline.

Last year 248,936 more travelers went through John Wayne's gates than in 2011, a 2.9 percent increase. It was the first year-over-year growth in passengers since 2007.

Airport Director Alan Murphy said airport traffic grew due to an expansion of service as well as an improving economy that saw more people traveling. John Wayne launched its first flights to Mexico last year.

"The addition of service to three new destinations in Mexico by AirTran and Interjet helped contribute to this growth," Murphy said. "The overall increase in passengers, however, reflects both the new international service and improvements in the general domestic travel market."

After getting off to a slow start, passenger traffic began growing in June, when AirTran, a subsidiary of Southwest Airlines, started daily flights from Orange County to Mexico City and Cabo San Lucas. Travel slowed in September, as the summer vacation season ended, then began rising again in October when Interjet launched daily service to Mexico City and Guadalajara.

In December, 735,626 travelers used the airport, a 5.5 percent increase over December 2011.

John Wayne also saw a boost in traffic by private planes and jets, which grew 1.2 percent over 2011.

Air cargo is not a big business at John Wayne, which has just two cargo flights a day with some belly cargo on commercial planes. Overall tonnage was up 14.8 percent through November, the most recent statistics available.